Vyacheslav Melnikov: Zenit needs to think about the future

IS THE ACADEMY A SOCIAL PROJECT?

— Currently, two Russian football players take to the field in Zenit’s starting lineup (except for Mario Fernandez, who has received citizenship). Why, given this vector of development, does the club need its own academy?

— This question should be addressed to the management of the club, which spends a lot of money on developing the academy and improving its base. Today it is one of the best in Russia. Perhaps for Zenit the club academy is a social project. Let’s not forget that hundreds of St. Petersburg boys, and now girls, play football in the uniform they dream of from a young age.

— Do graduates of St. Petersburg sports schools today have a chance to get into, if not Zenit, then the RPL club?

– Today Zenit has the opportunity to invite quality foreign players and the best Russian football players, but you also need to think about the future. This applies to all RPL clubs. Graduates of the academy and other city sports schools have a choice. You can, as Dmitry Vasiliev does, prove your ability to compete even with foreigners. Or go for rent. Now in the RPL there are many graduates of St. Petersburg sports schools who have followed this path: Kirill Kravtsov – in Sochi, Danila Prokhin – in Orenburg, Danila Kozlov – in Baltika. The latter showed himself very clearly in the cup game with Lokomotiv, becoming the best player of the match. Kozlov helped his current team reach the semi-finals of the RPL Path. But he only went on loan this winter!

— When they shell out millions of euros for the 18-year-old Brazilian Pedro, he will get a place in the main lineup faster than the 18-year-old St. Petersburg resident, no matter how talented he is…

— Of course, the foreign players who are bought for that kind of money will take to the field. Otherwise, the people who were involved in these transfers will be asked why such large sums were spent. Although it is worth noting that both 18-year-old Pedro and 26-year-old Arthur, who came to Zenit this winter, are superior in class to their St. Petersburg peers. Defender Nino, who is called up to the Brazilian national team, is generally a player of the highest class by the standards of the current RPL.

— Russian clubs are now suspended from participating in European competitions, but foreigners still predominate in RPL teams?

— At Zenit, in general, the roster is assembled for the Champions League. This applies to both the class of performers and their number. In fact, there are now two players for each position. Most often, club managers explain this approach by saying that a foreign player can be bought cheaper than a Russian player of the same level. Only the head coach of the team, who is faced with the task of winning the championship, winning medals or the Russian Cup, does not care what passports the players have. He needs to solve a problem.

ZENIT HAS ONLY ONE COMPETITOR

— The owner of Krasnodar Sergei Galitsky declared the goal of winning the national championship with a team consisting of 11 graduates of the club academy and demonstrating attacking football, but something went wrong…

— At the beginning of 2022, almost all Krasnodar foreign players left the team, and they were replaced by students of the club academy. They did quite well, but the guys lacked experience. Some two years have passed, and foreign players bought to solve immediate problems are again joining Krasnodar. The owner of the club, who created the best academy in the country, was not satisfied with the football preached by the recently fired Serbian head coach Vladimir Ivic. But the Krasnodar team went into the winter break as leaders and competed with Zenit in the fight for gold.

— Don’t you consider Krasnodar a contender for first place in the RPL?

— Only Zenit itself can compete with Zenit in the fight for first place, if at some point it relaxes or the foreign players completely lose motivation. In terms of composition, the St. Petersburg team is superior to everyone else. The team has an excellent microclimate, which cannot be said about many of its potential competitors.

— Under the leadership of Sergei Semak, Zenit won five Russian championships, adding a star to the club emblem. How did the Russian coach manage to achieve what Luciano Spalletti and Andre Villas-Boas, Mircea Lucescu and Roberto Mancini did not achieve?

— Even with the current number of foreign players, Zenit remains a Russian and even a St. Petersburg team. Semak played abroad, worked as an assistant for many foreign specialists, but unlike them, he understands the Russian mentality and, if you like, the Russian soul.

ARSHAVIN AND KERZHAKOV WERE THEIR OWN

— The last homegrown football players who showed themselves brightly at Zenit were the guys who came under Vlastimil Petrzhel from the youth team that you coached…

— This happened not thanks to, but despite the concept of the Czech coach. After all, when he arrived in St. Petersburg, he brought with him several compatriots. Then foreign players from other Eastern European countries began to appear on the team. There simply weren’t enough funds for the Brazilians at that time. The 2003 season, in which Zenit won silver medals under the leadership of Petrzela, was not easy. At some point, clouds gathered over Vlastimil, and he decided to show the club management that there was no point in counting on the “St. Petersburg boys,” as he later began to call them. We need to buy new legionnaires. It was at this moment that Igor Denisov and Vladimir Bystrov, Oleg Vlasov and Dmitry Makarov, Andrei Nikolaev and Konstantin Lobov were transferred from the youth team to the main team. Together with the already established leaders of Zenit, Andrei Arshavin and Alexander Kerzhakov, this gang demonstrated cheerful, sparkling football that the fans liked. They were also loved because they belonged to us.

— How do you assess the current level of football players from city sports schools?

– For the most part, he is short. All the best are concentrated in three leading schools: the Zenit Academy (formerly Smena), which has a long history, the Zenit Sports School, and Almaz-Antey, which has recently been seriously engaged in the development of youth football. These teams represent our city in the Youth Football League. After the reforms carried out by the RFU, not only teams representing RPL clubs, but also the best football schools in the country participate in the nearest reserve competitions.

— SSHOR “Zenith” and “Almaz-Antey” do not have the top of the pyramid in the form of a team of masters. Do we need to create them?

— This would be useful for the mentioned sports schools. The best students would have seen the future. Although creating even a second league team based on graduates of one school is problematic. As fairly high goals are set, it will be necessary to invite better players not only from St. Petersburg, but also from other cities. Legionnaires may already appear in the first league.

NOT EVERYONE STRIVED TO BECOME A COACH

— The championship squad of Zenit-84 consisted almost entirely of Leningraders, and only three players came from other regions: Mikhail Biryukov from the Moscow region, Anatoly Davydov from Tula and Vyacheslav Melnikov from Gorky, who in 1990 returned the historical name Nizhny Novgorod. Did you feel like “legionnaires”?

– Well, what are you talking about! They immediately became their own. And the USSR Championship cannot be compared with the RPL. Many teams that played in the All-Union Championship relied on their players and were distinguished by their own unique style. And Tbilisi “Dynamo”, and Yerevan “Ararat”, and Tashkent “Pakhtakor”, and Vilnius “Zalgiris”. Dynamo Kiev had a special place, collecting football players from all over Ukraine and passing them through their own double team.

— You only needed one season as part of Gorky’s Volga to receive an invitation to Leningrad…

— I was recommended to German Zonin, who then headed Zenit, by coach Veniamin Krylov. He looked through promising football players from Russian clubs. I was also lucky with the institute. At that time there was a branch of the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Education in Gorky. During the entrance exams that had to be taken in Leningrad, he lived in a student dormitory with fellow countrymen, famous hockey players, future Olympic champions Vladimir Kovin and Alexander Skvortsov. One of the tests was a two-way game. It was attended by Zenit coach Stanislav Zavidonov. He apparently liked the future Lesgaft student.

— How do you explain the fact that only you, Biryukov and Davydov worked as head coaches at Zenit, and none of the St. Petersburg residents managed to do this?

– By coincidence. It is not worth saying that the provincials who came to conquer Leningrad have great penetration abilities. I would also like to note that not all Zenit-84 players aspired to become coaches. Some found themselves in administrative positions in football, others in business unrelated to it. Perhaps Sergei Dmitriev, who recently passed away, really wanted to prove himself in the coaching field, but it never worked out for him.